


Taste the Dark

by hilaryfaye



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, Naga!Pitch, Smut, Young North
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 22:04:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilaryfaye/pseuds/hilaryfaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was only the watching eyes, and the occasional smile flashed in the dark for just a moment. It made North’s skin prickle, and that damned monster began to invade his dreams.</p>
<p>They couldn’t be called nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taste the Dark

Sooner or later everyone grows curious about the dark, and what’s hiding there. North was still young then, and hot-headed as a wild horse. He’d fought and bested Pitch in battle before, and he was certain he held only contempt for the things that slunk in the shadows, creeping back to their master before they could be caught. 

There were eyes there that caught North’s attention, though—eyes that stripped away his pretences and knew him for what he was. They burned to North’s core, whispering through the back of his mind until North thought he might be going mad with the thoughts that those eyes inspired, and the things he began to think when he lay alone in the dark. 

It was madness, of course. Pitch was a monster, a product of the very fear he sent out in the dark. Yet…

North had waited for Pitch to make some move, some grab for power as he had the last time.

It never came. There was only the watching eyes, and the occasional smile flashed in the dark for just a moment. It made North’s skin prickle, and that damned monster began to invade his dreams.

They couldn’t be called nightmares.

The dreams all started out the same, in the thick of one of their battles with Pitch. He would be slashing through Fearlings, lost in the fray, and one by one every single one of the beasts would fall, and North would be left standing alone, in a vast cavern he didn’t recognize. Heart thundering against his ribs, North lowered his swords, looking around. The silence was heavy as wool, making North painfully aware of his own panting breath.

Pitch would melt from the shadows, his eyes flashing and lips pulled back from his teeth in a mockery of a grin. Instinct would tell North he should fight, but he never raised his swords. He dropped them, the clatter as they hit the cold stone like needles to his ears. Pitch spread his hands in welcome. He may have looked slender as a sapling but North knew—somehow he knew—that Pitch was far stronger than he looked.

In the dreams North reached out, seizing Pitch’s wrist. The skin was cool and dry under his finger, and Pitch’s smile broadened. North felt something familiar and unwanted stirring in him, but what would have happened next North didn’t know, because this was when he woke in the middle of the night and reached for his sword, half-convinced that Pitch was just beyond in the darkness. 

He fell back against the mattress, willing his heart to calm. He was never entirely sure if it was fear he felt, or… something else entirely.

The others noticed that he seemed to be losing sleep, but North was able to brush away their worries and plunge deeper into his work. He would lose himself in the creating, so that only when he was forced to stop to eat or rest would the thought of those eyes come creeping back to him. 

They flashed like golden coins tossed in the air and brought up too many memories for North’s comfort, and yet they excited something in him—something that Nicholas St. North was not eager to acknowledge. 

It wasn’t as if he was a stranger to that particular feeling. He had enjoyed the comforts of a good romp under the furs plenty of times, and he had missed it a bit in Santoff Claussen, where he had little time for anything but his projects.

What worried him was that it was Pitch provoking that desire, and with such frequency and strength.

North twirled the end of his moustache, brooding over a steaming cup of cocoa as the stars came out. There was no moon that night, so he didn’t bother to look skyward for reassurance from MiM. Besides, what would he know about anything of this sort? Living all alone up there on the moon, MiM was probably as pure as new fallen snow. No, this was a problem that North would have to solve on his own. 

Ignoring the problem was getting him nowhere. If anything, it was only making the dreams worse, stronger. 

He had a few other options—he could leave Santoff Claussen for a little while, just long enough to find a partner he need never see again and take a good tumble. Perhaps that would do away with the strange, unwanted dreams. (A hurried hand in the middle of the night didn’t seem to be achieving much.)

The other—the one North was least eager to try—was to go to Pitch himself.

Pitch was about as friendly as the average viper on the best of occasions, and North didn’t fancy the idea of letting Pitch know just how it was he was haunting North’s dreams. At best, the Nightmare King would laugh in his face. 

North swallowed the cocoa to fast, scalding his tongue. He grimaced, and looked off through the dark. 

One way or another, he had to solve this little problem, and get on with life. 

—

North barely remembered the excuses he made for his sudden departure. He fancied even his horse, Petrov, looked at him sceptically  He didn’t take much with him—just enough to get him where he was going and back. He thought perhaps Ombric might have an idea as to why he was leaving, but the old wizard made no remark about it. 

North was just as glad—he couldn’t have handled the embarrassment of having to explain. He was embarrassed enough on his own.

Arriving there, North hoped that this would work. He wasn’t so sure any more  and the uncertainty made him question if this trip would achieve anything at all. 

Tucked away in an inn with a drink in his hand, though, North told himself there was no harm in trying. Certainly it was better to test this first, before resorting to more desperate measures. 

Though there were plenty of pretty women there, North didn’t think they would provide quite the relief he needed.

He found his partner in a man sitting not far from him. He was shorter than North, but slender and had a hawkish look similar to Pitch. He noticed North looking at him and smiled over his drink. 

The man—North never asked his name—had a room upstairs. They were rough and impatient, and North didn’t stop to think about the way the headboard knocked against the wall. He was trying to bury his fears in this, one feverish body slammed up against another. 

North smothered a cry and shut his eyes to the world, colour blooming behind his eyelids as everything went still. Beneath him his partner shivered and relaxed. North pulled away, feeling like the edge had been taken off of some great hunger. 

Not a complete loss, then.

North made the journey back feeling more at ease than he had in weeks.

For three nights in a row, the dreams didn’t come.

On the fourth night, they came back with a fury. North woke in his bed, body aching and heart racing, hungering for something he knew he couldn’t have. 

He felt as if he were going out of his mind. He had to be, to want Pitch of all people. His body craved the darkness the way a person craves a treat they’ve never tasted, but are sure is delightful. He wanted Pitch, and whenever North closed his eyes he could see it—Pitch on his belly, slick with sweat and panting. 

He fumbled in the dark, for the moment letting the fantasy run wild. He didn’t want to think about how wrong it was, wanting this from a man he hated. All he knew was that he ached for it, and that he could not spend all his time running away from that ache.

He had to deal with this, and deal with it soon.

—

Finding Pitch was harder than North expected, particularly when he was seeking out the Nightmare King alone. North had never faced Pitch alone, and he didn’t fancy it now. He’d left a letter in his private rooms back at Santoff Claussen, just in case he was absent a little too long. They would know where to find him… and North would have some lie prepared as for why he had been there in the first place.

He couldn’t tell them the truth.

North felt incredibly uneasy, walking into Pitch’s lair without his sword. It had seemed unlikely that he would get far if he brought it, but even now every bone in North’s body was telling him to get out before Pitch knew he was there, and to come back with sword in hand. 

He noticed a dais cloaked in shadow near the back of the room, some hulking mass coiled around it like a serpent, obscuring the lower half of the man who sat there, eyes burning through the darkness.

“Well,” Pitch purred, “To what do I owe the honour, Nicholas?”

North disliked the use of his first name. His palms itched for the swords he had left behind. “I’ve… come to ask a favour.”

“I’m not in the business of handing out favours ” The serpentine mass began to uncoil from around the throne, and North’s eyes widened as he realized that it was, in fact, a part of Pitch. The entire lower half of his body had been replaced by a long, winding serpent’s tail, and oily black expanse of muscle and sinew. 

Pitch noticed North’s stare and smirked, rising to a height that forced North to crane his neck to see Pitch’s face. “Lovely, isn’t it?” Pitch murmured. “I must admit, I didn’t see many advantages to lacking legs until this form came along.”

North felt his mouth go dry. There was something both startlingly wrong and deadly alluring about this—that snake body could crush him, squeeze the life from him, and yet…

Pitch’s eyes narrowed, and he studied North intently. A look akin to shock crossed his face for the briefest of moments, and then calculated smugness. “Oh,” he said in a low voice, “Not here for a confrontation, I see.”

North felt fire rush to his face, and cleared his throat. He was nearly hypnotized by the way Pitch’s serpent body was nearly always in motion, shifting and twisting, the narrow end flicking in the shadows. Pitch reached out a hand as if to touch his face. “The great Nicholas St. North—”

Out of instinct more than anything else North captured Pitch’s wrist in an iron grip, keeping Pitch from touching him. A smile twisted on Pitch’s lips.

“—come to play in the dark.”

North stared at Pitch, feeling oddly exposed. Pitch pushed away the grasp on his wrist, and drew a curled finger along North’s cheek. “Perhaps I underestimated you, Nicholas. No one knows you’re here, do they?”

North didn’t need to answer that, he knew. He watched Pitch warily, resentful of the way his body began to ache at just that bare touch to his cheek. 

“I know why you’re here,” Pitch murmured, the coils of his snake body beginning to shift and stir, sliding around North and holding him where he stood. “Everyone wants a taste of the dark, in their own way. You… you want to tame it. I know that burn, that low fire in you that refuses to be put out, embers that can only be stoked to open flame.” Pitch had brought his lips close to North’s ear, purring this litany as his long fingers crept to North’s neck.

North stayed motionless for the longest time, letting Pitch surround him and enclose him, before he moved. He closed his fingers around Pitch’s throat, holding the Nightmare King back at arm’s length. A bold move, perhaps, but Pitch only smiled, his coils growing tighter around North’s midsection. “You’re all fire, aren’t you, Nicholas? You know what you want, even when you’re sure you shouldn’t want it.” 

North disliked Pitch being so certain and smug. He disliked that he had come here, disliked that he felt so close and yet so impossibly far from getting what he had come for. 

“So, my dear Nicholas, I take it you want your little secret kept?”

North ground his teeth together, wishing he hadn’t come. Pitch was too smug, too sure of himself—and where North was standing at the moment, it would not be very hard for Pitch to kill him.

He didn’t imagine that Pitch was about to do that, though. The grip of the serpentine body was tight, but not crushing. Pitch removed North’s hand from his throat, flicking North’s cap from his head with a lazy motion. North did his best to keep his eyes trained forward, not following Pitch’s bared torso, the same cold grey of river rocks. Pitch crept close again, one hand pressed into North’s shoulder, the other twisting in his hair as Pitch began to whisper in his ear once more. 

“Don’t think I don’t know what you are, North. All fire, just barely contained. I can let you have so much more, Nicholas… why limit how high the flames can reach?”

North meant to turn his head to look Pitch in the eye—all that achieved was turning his face into the crook of Pitch’s shoulder and neck. “I didn’t come here for that,” he growled. The fingers in his hair trailed down the back of his neck, making his skin prickle.

Pitch chuckled. “Stubborn as ever.” He bit just behind North’s ear, sending a jolt through North’s entire body. North shoved Pitch back, hand clasped at Pitch’s shoulders. His face was hot and his breath was ragged. Pitch smiled and uncoiled, freeing North. “Bad form to be getting personal in the front room, don’t you think? And on a first visit.”

North watched Pitch warily, retrieving his cap. Pitch turned, gliding over the stone and stopping only when he reached an archway, looking back at North. 

North hesitated. His head told him this was a trap, that whatever was beyond that archway would probably result in his imprisonment or death. Yet Pitch hardly made a move, and North felt himself being drawn forward as if there was a reel attached to his belt. He followed, alert, and scanned the shadows as Pitch led him deeper into the cavern. 

Where they stopped could hardly be called a room as much as a nest. Pitch reclined on the coils of his own serpent tail, waiting. It was that waiting that nearly unnerved North, the expectation. He felt rather like an idiot boy again, unsure of himself in the face of a much more experience partner. 

A low hiss, perhaps in exasperation, and the end of the snake tail lashed around North’s ankle, dragging him forward. North stumbled and looked up in indignant anger, only fuelled by the leer on Pitch’s face. He dropped his cap and plunged forward, shrugging off his coat as he crushed that smirk under a kiss, weight bearing down on Pitch. 

Pitch acquiesced, a low chuckle coming from him as North moved to sink his teeth into Pitch’s throat, pulling his head back by the hair. Pitch pressed up into the near attack, North’s hands grasping Pitch’s sides and pulling him flat against  his chest. Whatever hunger that had been working on North, it appeared to have burrowed deep.

North couldn’t tell just what it was he felt. All of Pitch’s manipulative certainty seemed to have melted away in the space of moments, his body curling around North not in a tight grasp, but in an almost embrace. Pitch’s fingers tangled in his hair, the other arm wrapped around to grasp his shoulder as North explored every available inch of Pitch’s face and neck with his mouth. 

What his dreams had left unfinished could never have compared to this, allowing himself for a few moments to be consumed by the want that had smouldered at the back of his mind for so long. He straddled the place where Pitch’s hips melted into the serpent tail, scraping his teeth over Pitch’s shoulder and only encouraged by the low moan that came from Pitch’s throat. North was startled by a crash, but realized a moment later it was Pitch, his snake body slamming against the wall. 

North panted, looking down at Pitch. There were already purplish marks in his skin, and the sharp look on Pitch’s face was one North knew well. What are you waiting for?

He bent, still rough with his kiss but not so demoniac. He wondered briefly if Pitch was only fanning the flames with his submissive gestures, but his head emptied of any wondering when Pitch’s hand slipped under his tunic, trailing along his stomach. He sucked in a breath, pulling back to shed the tunic as well and toss it aside with his coat. The air was warmer than he’d expected, though maybe it was only that they were both flush with a craving North didn’t want to name.

Pitch’s hands lazily explored North’s upper body, as if they had all the time in the world. His hands were not so cool as North had imagined, but their dry touch whispering over his skin had North pushing Pitch back again, claiming another kiss. The coils pressed against his legs, Pitch scraping fingernails down his back. 

North pulled off of his straddle, kicking off his boots. Pitch found his way to North’s belt, loosening it and slipping a hand past the top of North’s trousers. North groaned, his head falling back as Pitch crept along his collar and throat with his sly, quick kisses and bites, running the tip of his tongue along every bite mark before he moved on to a new place. 

North pulled him upright, so they were both sitting. He could feel the cool coils of snakeskin pressed against his back, and he hooked his legs around a coil, leaning back as Pitch moved down his chest, circling each nipple with his tongue and giving a swift nip. North bit back another groan, arching his back up as Pitch worked along his stomach, pulling North’s trousers down to his thighs. North barely had time to draw a breath before Pitch was at his cock.

North hissed some rather foul things in Russian when Pitch closed his mouth over the head, tongue swirling. His mouth was hot and quick, only increasing the tension building in North. North tangled his fingers in Pitch’s hair, biting at his knuckle to keep from embarrassing himself with more moaning. His eyes screwed shut and he gave a jolt, light exploding behind his eyes as his whole body went taut, and then relaxed.

North felt hazy, and it took him a moment to remember where he was, sprawled across Pitch Black. Pitch’s fingers danced across his abdomen, and retreated when Pitch noticed he was being watched. He curled his arm back against his torso, like a broken wing.

He was trying to look impassive, but North caught a trace of something he thought looked like sadness. He peeled himself away, pulling his trousers back up and hunting for his belt.

Pitch coiled, drawing into himself, watching the Cossack dress. He was still sticky with sweat, and clearly Nicholas St. North didn’t intend to linger. Pitch couldn’t say he was surprised.

North felt self-conscious with Pitch’s eyes on his back. He could feel the sting of the scratches on his shoulders, and when he glanced at Pitch and saw the darkened marks on Pitch himself, he felt his face flush with shame.

No one, he thought, could ever hear of this.

One question still burned at the back of his mind, though. “Why did you do this?” he asked, not looking at Pitch.

Pitch examined the back of his hand. “Fearlings make poor company, and one does grow tired of one’s own hands.”

Well, then. That was an answer North could swallow, but it wasn’t one he was sure he believed. Pitch noticed his gaze and scowled. “You had best keep this to yourself, Nicholas, unless you’d like to suffer for it.”

What did Pitch think he was? A conquest to be bragged about? North only nodded, pulling on his tunic, and his coat. He started searching for his cap, and felt it hit him square in the back. Pitch had thrown it at him. North jammed it on his head, face growing hot again as he bent to pull on his boots. Pitch folded his arms and rested his chin on them, using his own serpent’s body as a prop. His tail flicked restlessly, gold eyes burning.

North hesitated, and on an impulse he would never fully be able to explain, he leaned over and pressed a light kiss to Pitch’s lips. Pitch stared at him and pushed him away, a look of fury flashing across his face before being replaced by a mask of impassivity. “Don’t be sentimental, Nicholas. It won’t do anyone any favours.”

North slapped the hand away, getting the message. “Right then. I’ll go.” He left Pitch in that little side room, and found his way back to the main cavern, and out into the daylight. Petrov was waiting, tethered to a nearby tree. North was almost certain the horse was giving him a suspicious look, which he ignored. North was too concerned with his own discontent, and hoping that his letter had not been found.

He had yet to think of a lie explaining where he had been.

 —

The dreams didn’t come again, but North did spend more time than he would have liked to admit thinking about Pitch while he laid awake in the dark. Most of all, he thought about that single moment of sadness on Pitch’s face, the one he’d been so quick to hide. He had never given much thought to the fact that Pitch was almost entirely alone.

And yet, this was his enemy. This was the monster who had kidnapped the children of Santoff Claussen time and time again.

North turned over in his bed with a sigh. The moonlight peeked through the window, and North pulled the blankets over his head, intending to be alone with his thoughts.

He’d had his taste of the dark.

He just wasn’t sure what to make of it. 


End file.
